Cooke Optics has added to its wide range of motion picture lenses with the introduction of the 300mm S7/i and the new 180mm Anamorphic/i Full Frame Plus lens. In addition, Cooke is announcing a new branch of the S7/i family by introducing three 1:1 macro Full Frame Plus lenses: 60mm, 90mm and 150mm.
In a cinematic universe expanding with superheroes, the creative challenge for filmmakers is to set newcomers apart from the crowd. The task was doubly important for Bloodshot, the first installment of a new franchise that Sony Pictures plans for characters of comic-book publisher Valiant Entertainment. The studio assigned responsibility to Dave Wilson, an established video game cinematic and trailer director for Blur Studio but first-time feature director, who in turn worked alongside cinematographer Jacques Jouffret, whose credits as a camera operator include Deepwater Horizon and Transformers: The Last Knight, and as a DP include The Purge and Mile 22.
When it came time to return to the world of Thra and reimagine the Dark Crystal movie for a whole new generation on Netflix, cinematographer Erik Wilson’s goal was to transform the puppets and make them more majestic. “You get into the politics and you get into the characters and you forget that they’re puppets,” he says
Cooke Optics TV, the educational website containing interviews with some of the world’s most renowned cinematographers and filmmakers, recently travelled to Pixar Animation Studios to discuss animation and cinematography with some of its top creative talent.
DP Nicolaj Bruel and director Matteo Garrone, who first worked together on the award-winning 2018 feature film Dogman, recently repeated their collaboration on the live action Italian language feature film Pinocchio, starring Oscar winner Roberto Benigni. A live action adaptation of the classic fairy tale about a wooden puppet that is brought to life, the production had to be right on many levels.
The Netflix series GLOW, which launched its 10-episode third season in August 2019, brings the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling to Las Vegas and the fictitious Fan-Tan Hotel and Casino. The production captures the personal and professional lives of a group of women who perform for a wrestling organization that started in Los Angeles but now find themselves in glitzy Las Vegas during the 1980s. Cinematographer Chris Teague met with show creators, executive producers and episode writers Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch to pitch his ideas for the new look of GLOW for its new Las Vegas setting, which is where they realized that everyone was on the same page.
Star Trek: Picard, the highly anticipated streaming series from CBS All Access, relied on two complete sets of Cooke Optics Anamorphic/I Special Flair lenses to tell the story. The follow-up series to Star Trek: The Next Generation, and centers on Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart) in the next chapter of his life. Director of photography Philip Lanyon’s goal was to give this new series a big movie adventure epic saga feel — while keeping fans in a familiar visual world.
Cinematographer Peter Chang has completed his latest film, Cuba, which won the Best Documentary award at the 34th Annual Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival and has begun releasing to museums, educational institutions and other giant screen and IMAX venues. In a break from giant screen tradition, his film features close-ups. To accomplish that, he turned to Cooke lenses.
As part of its exhibit at the Consumer Electronics Show taking place this week in Las Vegas, CJ 4DPlex unveiled the prototype of ultra-wide zoom lens projection technology that the company is currently exploring to help existing movie theatres reconfigure their auditoriums and enable them to install bigger screen
As Hawthorne College winds down for the Christmas holidays, a black-masked stalker begins killing sorority sisters one by one. Produced by Jason Blum (Halloween, Get Out) for Blumhouse Productions, Black Christmas is a re-imagining of the 1974 cult classic for the 21st century audience. The horror film was directed and co-written by Sophia Takal (Always Shine). Although Takal was a fan of the original film, she wanted to bring attention to contemporary women’s rights issues, in particular the Me-Too movement
